Conga Drums in Space and Time

1.3 VISUAL vs ACOUSTICAL DEPTH of PERSPECTIVE

To illustrate the tangible effects possible with compound rhythms, i.e. polyrhythms and polymeters, an interesting sensory analogy can be made between the the development and evolution of visual arts vis-a-vis their acoustic counterparts, through a comparison of the methods used by these two forms of expression to describe the perception of spatial depth.

In the visual arts, engendered like the acoustic arts presumably to reflect the artist’s perception of the world, the history of painting as an art records a pivotal development that occurred in Europe during the early 15th century, after millennia of fruitless human attempts to depict space accurately.

Reviews of pre-Renaissance efforts to graphically interpret three-dimensional space, ranging from the Stone Age to the Middle Ages and including art forms of ancient Egypt, China, Europe and the Americas, clearly demonstrate how diverse cultures struggled in similar ways to represent three-dimensional space onto a flat surface, without much success. (Ref. 6 )

The discovery of the geometric laws of perspective by the architect Filippo Brunelleschi around the beginning of the 1400’s, and their application by Masaccio, Alberti and others, enabled Italian artists to accurately portray the “depth” of three-dimensionality on two-dimensional surfaces, through the use of a graphic method of vanishing points and horizon lines formalized by Uccello. (Ref. 7 )

Within the sound spectrum, the musical arts offer a remarkable analogy to the above visual (space) development, in acoustic (time) terms, which can be appreciated through the comparison between mono-rhtythmic and poly-rhythmic musical compositions.

Mono-rhythmic musical compositions can be perceived or “viewed” by our ears as two-dimensional and “flat” - like pre-Renaissance graphics - in their linear portrayal of time (in lieu of space) within the limited, two-dimensional rhythmic parameters of “up” and “down” beats.

Polyrhythmic exponents however, allow an acoustical representation akin to spatially accurate visual perspectives, particularly when embodied by a mature system of established principles - like Brunelleschi’s - though developed and proven effective over perhaps thousands of years, such as it has eventually blossomed in Afro-Cuban music as a primary example.